The Night Following: Morag Joss

Minutes after finding a condom wrapper in the glove compartment of her husband's car, a distraught woman sets off to confront him, then hits and kills a cyclist, a retired English teacher and sometime writer called Ruth Mitchell. Guilt-ridden, the driver becomes obsessed with Ruth's widower, Arthur, whose lonely, nocturnal life she first observes, then enters. Joss's first-person narrative is broken with letters from the grieving Arthur to Ruth and the draft of Ruth's last novel and, unfortunately, all three are given to lengthy pseudo-philosophising and clunky metaphors (the heroine is "kept benumbed" by her anaesthetist husband), draining the plot of any suspense.